27. My Hands Are Tied
My Hands Are Tied
My head aches, and my body is stiff. Did I drink more wine last night than I thought? I don’t remember anything after I stepped through the Coven gates and saw my car sitting at the curb where I’d left it, illuminated in the holo-lights from the fence.
Opening my eyes, there’s nothing but black.
Slowly, my senses start to come back online.
I’m not lying in bed. There’s no mattress or pillow under me, and something is covering my eyes.
I try to stretch, but my wrists are tied together in front of me, and I realize I’m sitting upright against a hard surface with my feet also bound.
Taking several deep, slow breaths in and out, I force myself to fight the rising panic that’s closing in.
Shifting into detective mode, I take stock of what I can sense.
I’m wearing the clothing Micah gave me. I can feel the fabric of the linen pants against my legs, the t-shirt soft against my upper body.
Pressing against the wall that’s holding me upright, momentary relief crashes over me like a tsunami as I feel my gun tucked against my lower back.
I must have remembered to grab it on my way out of Micah’s suite.
It’s a small comfort, but I’ll take anything I can hold onto as a lifeline as I assess the situation.
There’s no give to whatever is binding me as I test out my wrists and ankles.
It’s stiff and feels like plastic, but it’s not flexible.
I’m certain it’s not rope or some kind of Magic.
There’s no blinding pain, and my skin slides against the bindings when I twist them.
I’m not gagged, and the cover is only over my eyes, not my entire head. Meaning it’s a blindfold of some sort.
It doesn’t take much to guess who kidnapped me. I vaguely remember a blow to the back of my head and pitching forward. Then nothing until now.
The wall I’m leaning against is cold. A deep, bone-chilling cold, with a hint of damp, the kind you get from places where the sun never permeates.
I pull my legs toward me awkwardly, making a gap between them.
Leaning forward as far as I can, I run my fingers over the ground.
The brick and mortar are uneven beneath my touch, the grout worn.
I scrape away some moss or lichen growing between the gaps and across the rough surface.
Wherever I am, it smells dank, the air cold and still, with barely any movement to it, and no hint of an outside breeze.
I can’t see any light leaking in beneath my eye covering.
I have no concept of time, but if the blow knocked me out cold, at least several hours must have passed.
If it’s not already daylight, it must be close to it.
I’m not gagged, which means there’s no chance of my being heard if I scream.
Not even by a Vamp or a Lyco. My best guess is that I’m deep underground.
Trying to gauge where they’ve taken me, I strain for any sound.
I can’t hear the hyper-rail that replaced the old subway system, but I know there is a warren of tunnels beneath it.
There are also underground streams, the original sewage system, and other utilities from the past that are no longer in use, thanks to all the newer tech.
I think I hear dripping water and far-distant echoes that could be something, or only my imagination.
My biggest questions are: Why am I still alive? When will they be back? And how do I escape before then?
The first question I know the answer to: I’m bait.
Rational thought finally squeezes its way past the brain waves focused on trying not to panic.
Even in the dark, my contacts should show me my feeds and messages.
I blink, but there’s nothing but unending black.
Somehow, they’ve turned my microchip off.
Only I should be able to do that. It’s a built-in security measure, and a reason humans are happy to have their every move tracked and monitored by the World Council.
Kidnappers can incapacitate a person but not their micro.
It’s a slim kind of hope if the worst eventuates. Which, for me, it has.
What Selene and her pet Warlock hopefully aren’t aware of is that when a micro goes fully dark- not just silenced- it sends an SOS, giving last location.
It can even be reverse-engineered to view the last sight that person’s contacts captured.
As a police detective, alerts would have immediately gone to HQ, the Captain, and my partner, Tim Easten.
I was kidnapped outside the Coven, meaning Micah will also know I’m missing by now.
My colleagues will be searching for me, and so will the Vampire.
But that’s the whole point. I was hit from behind, but who took me is not a secret.
They want Micah to know. They want him to find me.
But I doubt they want the entire NYC Police Force looking for them.
Which gives me an advantage. A small one, but hope is all that’s needed to settle my racing heart.
Fear is a luxury I can’t afford right now.
Of course, I’m still going to try my best to escape.
The bow to my head must have made my thoughts sluggish, because it’s taken me this long to realize my hands are bound in front of me, which means I can rip the blindfold off, instead of sitting here with it obscuring my sight.
Bending my arms at the elbows, I stretch my hands out until I grasp the edge of the fabric, tearing it over my head.
Nowhere is without some sliver of light, so I force myself to wait until my eyes adjust.
It takes an eternity, and it’s still almost completely black in here, but I can finally make out that I’m not in a tunnel.
It’s wider than I thought, square in shape, with a flat ceiling.
I think there’s an archway across from me, but I can’t be sure.
There’s a sliver of light in the distance, but it’s so dim I think I could be imagining it. The rest of the space feels empty.
My head is pounding, and I want nothing more than to close my eyes again and lie my head back against the cold brick wall.
My throat is so dry, the moment I realize it, I can’t think of anything except my need for water.
But if that’s an exit in the distance, I can get out.
I’ll eventually need to get my feet free, but for now, I can shuffle across.
Skittering sounds along the walls, and I’m thankful I don’t have a rodent phobia.
Still, I’d rather they didn’t come too close.
The darkness makes everything more ominous, every sound louder than it really is.
I take another moment to think through how best to move myself across the open space to what I’m hoping is actually an arch that leads to my escape.
If I place my boots out in front of me and try to force my ass along the floor, I’ll end up raw and probably topple over.
I’ll need to use my hands to push from behind.
Jake would say I’m flexible, but this will be a true test. Pulling my legs against my body as tightly as I can, I curve my back and bend over them with my arms outstretched. I grip the toes of my boots with my fingers.
It’s not possible. My wrists are bound so tightly together that I can’t get them over my feet, with my ankles also bound. Which means I can’t reach my gun either. I tamp down my rising frustration.
Next plan. If I shuffle like an upside-down caterpillar, it will be slow, painful, and basically pointless if I’m somewhere in the vast warren of disused tunnels beneath the city.
This space will only lead to another and another and another.
Add to that the fact that I’m almost in pitch black.
Injuring myself on unseen objects won’t help my situation.
So I can either wait until I’m rescued, Selene and the Necromancer return, or try to get my ankles free.
That seems slightly less impossible than my wrists.
Reaching down, I run my hands along the plastic, noting that they’re police-issue flexi-cuffs.
They’re essentially thick zip ties with two separate lengths of cable that restrict movement when pulled tight.
They don’t rub on the skin, with the inside being smooth.
They’re also impossible to get free from if you’re human.
They’re not made to hold a Lyco or Vamp, but unfortunately, I’m neither.
Leaning back against the wall once more, I rest my head tiredly against the cool surface. I’m not getting out of here anytime soon. Tears threaten, and I let a few spill down my cheeks, like the overflow of a dam to stop it from cracking completely.
I must drift because I jerk into full consciousness at the sound of movement, my eyes flying open. A light flares, a ball of white hovering in the air. Magic. The sudden flare is so painful, I shut my eyes against it.
‘She’s awake,’ says a male voice. Even without the rich New Orleans accent, I would know it was the Warlock who turned to Death Magic.
‘And still here,’ purrs a female voice. Selene. I’m not sure what I thought she would sound like. Maybe innocent, sweet, and melodic. Instead, it’s rich and seductive, alluring in a way that instantly repels me, like spiders skittering across my skin.
‘It’s kind of hard to escape with my ankles tied together,’ I say in the most sarcastic tone I can muster. The headache is gone, but my body is rigid from sitting against the cold wall and floor. ‘But I did try,’ I add defiantly.
Cracking my eyes open slowly, I let them adjust to the illumination.
Selene is standing in front of me, looking down with a haughty expression on her delicate features.
She’s stunningly beautiful. Part of me had thought Micah was exaggerating. Rose-colored glasses and all that. He wasn’t. Vampirism doesn’t make someone attractive; it only enhances what they were born with.